A Thousand Acres And The Rocky Mountains
by Lena Carr
Summary: Wildlife, weather, and wack-jobs – Vic's still struggling to get acclimated to Wyoming. (S1, Gen, ensemble, mentions of Vic/Sean, T for Moretti mouth, additional notes at chapter end.) Now complete.
1. A List

_Author's Notes/Warnings/Etc at the end._

* * *

 _/O/ The list_

* * *

It's been six months, and sometimes she thinks she's becoming … _accustomed_ – to Durant, to Absaroka, and to Wyoming.

(She refuses to use the word _resigned_.)

But that's only sometimes. Mostly, she's just _infuriated_.

Like today. She's got second watch, only Ruby called her, like, two minutes after she clocked in, and sent her after a disturbance at the matinee roadrace at the track off 293. An hour and a half later, she had the drunkest of the idiots in the back of her vehicle, mud all the way up the back of her ass, and hadn't even had a chance to get a bag of cotton candy. She frogmarched the drunk across the square in the spitting rain, and then up the stairs to the office, only nearly slipping and falling twice on the polished stairs.

"Shut. The. Fuck. UP." Vic shoved him into the holding cell and slammed the door.

"B-b-but," blubbered the drunk, "B-b-b-but Vera! You left her there! In the rain! She'll get ruined!"

"SHUT IT," Vic bellowed –

-it wasn't a scream, she had learned that lesson back in Philly, to keep her voice at least reasonably low and not shrill, because it made men _insane_ to have women shriek at them. She didn't give a fuck if it irritated the drunk, but she had a pair of brother officers she didn't intend to piss off –

\- and turned to take the file on Mr Dumbass Drunken Demo Derby from Ruby's hand. _Take_ , not _snatch_ , because Ruby didn't stand for that, even from the Sheriff. Vic flipped the file open and focused on the record, doing her best to ignore both Branch Connally and The Ferg.

"D & D, D & D, public urination, D & D, open container – " She paused, went back to the top of the fifth paragraph, "Open container, DWI, vandalizing public property and endangerment of livestock? In the 4th of July parade?"

The Ferg snorted. "The Mayor had bought the top steer at the spring sale. Monty spray painted the Mayor's name on the steer and rode it out into the middle of the Independence Day Parade."

Vic flicked her eyes at Ferg without moving her head. "I supposed that accounts for the endangerment of livestock." Ferg swallowed and shook his head.

Branch laughed behind his hand. Vic tried to pin him with a look, but the other deputy just shrugged her off. "Nope. Riding a steer's not illegal." He leaned back in his chair, his uniform annoyingly dry and crisp, even if he was an hour past clocking out.

Vic didn't care. Branch still hadn't come out to help her with the road rally.

From the cell, Mr 4D whined, "But Vera! In the raaaiiinnn!"

"Then what the fuck was the issue?" To Mr D4, Vic yelled, "SHUT UP! There's a tarp over your stupid car!"

Branch smirked. "You're a little tense, Vic. All the way down the list already today?"

That perked Ferg's flagging interest again. "List?"

"Of things unpredictable and annoying in Wyoming," Branch drawled, a shit eating grin spread across his face. _Fuck_. She should never have let him over hear her bitching on the phone to Sean.

"You have a list?" The Ferg was incredulous.

Vic slapped the file on the desk and glared. "I always have a list."

"Wack-jobs, weather, and…what was the rest, Vic?"

"Wildlife," she snapped, and started shrugging out of her jacket. "And today is two for three, and it's not even dinner time yet." She fixed Branch with one eye. "Which you can go get for me, if you're staying."

That at least galvanized Branch's tighted-jeaned ass out of his chair. "Nope. Things to do." He shrugged back into his coat and tucked his head back into his hat, nodding at Ruby as he left.

 _Not a nice way to refer to the boss's daughter_ , Vic thought, but didn't say, even though it cost her the taste of copper in her mouth. She dropped into her chair and kicked the bottom drawer open as a footrest even as she pulled the arrest sheet towards her.

The Ferg was still hovering. Mr D 4 was still blubbering in the cell.

"What?"

"It was – uh. The livestock endangerment charge? Was because he put the Mayor's name on the steer's, um, backside, and the Mayor stood up in his convertible, pulled out his derringer, and shot the steer three times."

Vic just stared.

"The steer was fine," Ferg hastened to say, "but Monty got bucked off, and broke his arm, so Judge Selby went easy on him –"

"No." Ferg blinked. Vic cleared her throat. "No. You're done. Go away. Find me food." As Ferg left, letting the knee high kid'n'crook gate swing shut behind him, Vic called after him, "Come back in forty-five minutes so I can go change!" Ferg waved at her as he shut the door. Ruby gave Vic The Eye over her glasses. Vic buried her attention in the arrest file before her and resisted the impulse to ruminate on her lot.

A lot filled to the brim with weather, wildlife, and wackjobs.

 _Fuck my life_ , Vic thought, and stabbed the paper with her pen.

* * *

/to be continued/

* * *

 **Author's notes:**

Characters/Pairing: Gennish, mentions of Vic/Sean. Vic Moretti, Branch Connally, The Ferg, Ruby, Henry Standing Bear, Walt Longmire

Setting/Warnings: S1-ish, pre-series. Influenced by book characterization, except when I preferred the tv series. Warnings for Moretti mouth and wide open skies.

A/N: Five part story. With thanks to the greatest beta eva (tm). All the errors remain my own. Title from Corb Lund's "September". Feedback and concrit aways appreciated. I hope you enjoyed the books and the tv show as much as I did.


	2. Weather

_Author's Notes/Warnings/Etc at the end_

* * *

 _/1/ Weather_

* * *

When Deputy Connally pulled the charger up to the front door of the Powder Junction substation, Vic had been leaning against the front door and watching the falling snow for nearly an hour.

It was frankly horrifying, the amount of white stuff already on the ground. Plus that which had fallen the day before, and melted a bit, and then frozen overnight. Which she really should have taken into account, and maybe have laid off the speed, just a little. But really, it wasn't like she was some Georgia redneck who didn't even know what the fuck snow was. She'd been born and raised in Philly. She knew snow. Or so she thought.

Turned out, she should have been more worried about the wind.

"Fuck me," she muttered under her breath. This morning she'd been really looking forward to heading back to Durant. She'd been stuck here in the passel of jackheads substation for three days and an extra night, with nothing more interesting than kids tagging the old trestle bridge with quasi-gang signs. Ops at Newett Energy were shutting down at noon, and Sean had called Vic's cell at oh-dark-in-the-morning to engage in a particularly filthy conversation - one that promised to be only a foreshadowing of the weekend to come. After that promising beginning, there'd been the snow, the rising wind that snatched her notebook from her hand on the way to the truck and two annoying call-outs in a row, and on the way back from the last one, she'd well and truly scuffed the front quarter panel. And the tire. And the frame.

Ruby had taken the call, copied down the report from the body shop without comment, and assured Vic that someone would be down to fetch her. "Noon, probably. One at the latest."

It was half past two when Connally finally showed. He beeped the siren – _dooh-wheeeet_ \- at her before she got the door open. _Like she hadn't gone out and checked the street every fifteen minutes in case he'd parked up the block._ She leaned out the door and gave him the finger before slamming the door and dashing to snatch up her bags. She got all the way out of the substation before she remembered she'd left the heat on and went back in to dial it back down. She dropped her overnighter and laptop case outside the door to give herself two hands to set the alarm and struggle with the lock. The temperature had already dropped since sunrise, and her clouding breath kept obscuring her vision but she got the bolt thrown before the alarm delay ran out.

"You're late," Vic snapped, and didn't bother to shake the snow off her overnighter before she dumped the canvas back in the back of the Charger. She slammed the rear door and jerked the front passenger open, shaking the hard flakes from her coat before peeling it off and sliding into the seat. "What the fuck happened to one o'clock?"

Connally didn't turn to look at her, only stared straight ahead over the steering wheel. "You don't have to ride with me. You want to walk, go ahead. Or," he said, flicking the windshield wipers back on, to clear the skim of snow that had gathered while she'd struggled with the lock. "You could drive the vehicle you were assigned. Oh, right, you managed to put that one in the shop, our first real snow day. Guess you're stuck walking."

She glared at him. "What are you going to tell the Sheriff, when you show up back in Durant without me?"

This time he did roll his head over on the headrest. "What makes you think he'd notice?"

She folded her arms. She didn't have a good answer to that.

 _Fuck my life_ , Vic thought. Not even four months and she was already wondering if she should have taken this job. She could have stayed in the house, kept it clean and tidy – because Sean still couldn't be bothered to pick up his own socks - spent her days in the library reading Anne Rice and Sherrilyn Kenyon novels. Maybe taken up knitting.

Out loud she said, "Go ahead, drive."

Branch put the Charger in gear and pulled out. He didn't offer an excuse. Nor any conversation.

The snow pelted the windshield – thicker, as always, once they were moving than it had been when she'd been watching through the door. The plows were evidently running behind. The Charger's heavy tires hissed on the road, throwing slush against the undercarriage in a steady hiss that underlaid the steady beat of the wipers.

She thought about reaching over to play with the radio, but Connally had indicated really early on that he adhered to the 'driver picks the music, rider shuts their face' rule of audio entertainment. Vic folded her arms and tried to ignore her twitching fingers.

She made it twelve miles at fifty miles an hour before she broke. "How pissed was he?" And that didn't sound pathetic at all. "About the truck?" As if she was in the shit for anything else today. That she knew of.

Connally shrugged. "We've got three years of reports into the city about that swale. This might get them off their ass." His eyes flicked up to the rear view, then back to the road ahead. A faded red sedan dinked along ahead of them, only the second car they'd passed since leaving the outskirts of Powder Junction. "But if you'd read the duty log notes, that stretch is marked. The wind's pretty constant and a blue norther'll shove empty trailers around on the downhill." He put the indicator on and checked the rear view.

"What duty notes?" she demanded. "I read all the notes all the way back to 2006, it's not like there's that much else to do. Damn stupid tourist," she snarled at the sedan, and did not give the civilian a finger.

"They only paved Keylock in '02. Lucian wrecked a truck there in January of '03."

"The fuck? The old sheriff breaks a vehicle on a random hillside a dozen years ago and I'm supposed to, what, mindread –"

If he'd not been shifting the car back to the right-hand lane, he might have seen it. If Vic hadn't been turned to face Connally and blister his ear drums, she would not have.

"Stop!" Connally's foot came up off the gas and tapped at the brakes, just enough to make the vehicle start to slide. He put his foot back on the acceleration pedal and applied himself to the steering, and the car straightened out. Vic twisted in her seat, fighting the safety belt, trying to see past the snow on the rear window. "What are you doing, stop, go back!" She smacked his shoulder when he didn't stop the car.

"Get off me, seriously! What the fuck?"

"There was a car, in the median, why the _fuck_ don't you people have median barriers, it was in a drift, go back!"

He twisted his head around, then snapped it forward again to fight the steering wheel and keep the Charger on the asphalt. "A car? Off the road, in a drift? You're sure?"

"Yes, I'm fucking sure, unless you have snow deer out here with red tail lights. No, I don't know, maybe a car –" She stared at the white road behind them, at the slight hump in the median now completely lost to the snowfall. The vehicle had been rounded, not a sedan, maybe one of the hatchbacks…"maybe a hatchback, maybe a minivan. Green, dark green." She thought through it again. "Mississippi plates."

"You're sure." But it wasn't a question now.

It was another six miles to a turn around, and then a slow creeping back the way they'd come. Connally kept an eye on the odometer to ensure they didn't blow right past the spot.

"How far? Are we there yet?"

"No, not yet. Another half mile."

"Slow down!"

"You might not see it, we'll have to get out and walk the –" But Vic had spotted the skid marks – faintly kicked up mud on the shoulder, where a tire had drifted off, and then the arc of a spinning skid that had flung the vehicle into the deep swale between the divided roadway.

"There, can you see?"

Connally was already braking, the lights flipped on and his hand reaching for the mic. "Absaroka Base, this is Unit two, come in."

Vic didn't wait for the static, but flung herself from the Charger. The vehicle itself was little more than a mound of snow, the disturbed clumps already smoothed by what was, she figured, less than half-an-hour's snowfall. She thought about the heavy tan coveralls in her overnighter, looked back at Connally, who was climbing out of the cruiser with the radio mic still in hand, and got a gallon of snow in her eyes. She turned around to put her back to the wind and pressed on. There, a bit of fender beckoned.

"Damnit, watch –"

She never actually heard the last part of the shouted warning. She had been plowing through the snow, aiming right at the green rim of the car, when the ground opened up under her feet and she dropped a yard and a half into four inches of ice melt.

"FUCK!" She made her knees buckle as she hit bottom, one ankle rolling on the river rocks. She went with it to save the joint, and ended up with that shin in the water, and her left hand as well. "Goddamit, who put the damn ditch here!" She struggled upright and found her world view distinctly altered. The snow had collapsed around her, leaving Vic in a funnel of snow with a wet spout, and her head barely peeking above the drift. She tried to clamber out but slipped on the freezing mud, ending up back in the gully but avoiding falling on her ass.

She got half a foot back up the side just in time for the cavalry to almost drown her in a wave of loose snow. She raised a hand to warn him off the slope, but the damn cowboy slowed and oh-so-casually gripped the edge of a reflective yellow ravine marker – a marker that Vic hadn't seen at all – and asked with studied casualness, "Making snow angels, Vic?"

"Shit," she said, and started laughing. He smirked at her and leaned down to offer a hand.

It took some doing, but she managed to get her good foot wedged on a solid rock and half hopped, half worm-wiggled far enough up to grasp his hand. He dropped his weight and pulled. Her knees cleared the gully edge in the same moment that another gust of wind battered them both –

\- absurdly, she remembered something Ruby had said the week before, _nothing between us and the north pole but three strands of barbwire, and half of that's down_ –

\- and blew the white hat off Branch's head.

Snatching after it only made sense. Branch had her with one hand and the reflective signpost with the other. She was the only one with a free hand. It was bigger than a baseball, and smacked neatly into her reaching hand.

The not-so stable rock crumbled away beneath her, Vic gasped, and Branch grunted explosively with the effort of throwing both of them backward. He heaved her suddenly swinging body up and over the rim of the culvert even as he fell backwards. She hit with an _ooff_ of expended air, and then there was a bit of mutual scrambling, as gravity tried to drag them both back into the ditch.

When she was still, Vic lay on her back, snow falling in her face, and the hat – only slightly crumpled – still in her fist. The wind whistled over the ravine marker, making the oval yellow panel rattle.

"I got it," she said weakly, and waved the hat. Branch stared at her, and collapsed down on his rump in the snow. "Hey," she said after a minute, "Aren't we supposed to be rescuing someone from the wreck?"

"Jesus H. Christ," Branch said, reverently, and pushed himself to his feet. He waited while Vic sat up, took his hat back from her, and gave her a hand up, in that order. "Watch your step," he said, pulling his hat back down on his head, but Vic figured she deserved it, and didn't bitch back at him.

The vehicle was a forest green Ford minivan, with standard Mississippi plates. The occupants were a pair of sisters on their way to see Yellowstone. It took Vic and Branch both to stomp and kick away enough snow to allow the doors to open. Branch checked the forward end of the vehicle and reported it fairly well scuffed, with the bumper bent around both front wheels. Vic looked over the women and found them in better shape, although badly rattled, and with a touch of carbon monoxide poisoning from running the car with the exhaust blocked.

Vic crouched in the lee of the driver's side door and asked the older and greyer woman - one Ms Greenwald - to move her feet again. "Do you hurt anywhere?"

"No, no, I'm fine." The woman shuddered. "Just cold. My goodness." With the door open and the engine off, the two women were already brighter and more coherent, and Vic was beginning to agree with them about the weather.

She stood and stepped closer to Branch, so the wind wouldn't snatch away her words. "They're okay, I think, but they've got street shoes on, I don't think they can get to the Charger from here." She waved at the northbound lane. "That side's almost closer, now."

Branch nodded and shouted back. "I'll go down to the next cut-across and call it in, then come back and get you. You okay waiting with them?"

"Fuck yeah, if I don't have to jump that creek again." That won her a grin from Branch. "Fifteen minutes?"

"Ten," he said, then looked at the gully between them and the cruiser's blue and red lights. "Ten once I get to the car."

"Why are you still here?" She tapped his shoulder, he mock-punched her back then ducked his head to trudge carefully up and around the gully. Vic shut the van door and jerked on the side door until it let her in.

The two sisters were Margaret and Mary-Anne, but they were quickly Maggie, Mo, and Vic. Maggie was mortified at the first accident she'd caused in forty-four years. ("Thirty-two," correct Mo. "There was that truck you rear-ended in the Publix parking lot." "I never told you about that." "No, but Mother did.") They were from Meridian, which was evidently a going concern in east Mississippi. It had been Mo's idea to spend Christmas in Yellowstone. ("I wanted to go to the Yucatan," Maggie said with a sigh. "Everyone goes to the Yucatan," Mo said tartly. "What's wrong with a vacation in America, for pity's sake?") They were both widowed – Mo for over a decade, Maggie for less than a year. They were both impressed with Vic being a female deputy. ("I wanted to be a police woman when I was a little girl," Maggie said. "You wanted to ride on the police horse behind Bobby Lee Peters," Mo said. "That's not at all the same." "Well, I at least had a chance with Bobby Lee, which is more than I could say about you and Neil Armstrong." Maggie looked at Vic in the rear-view mirror. "Do you ride a horse out here in Wyoming?" "Or any deputies?" put in Mo. "That young man wears a hat very well.")

Vic was actually a little sorry when she spotted the returning cruiser's lights, despite the way her ankle was starting to ache and both her feet were freezing.

The slope up to the north-bound road was rough but relatively short. The two women had packed light – a pair of manageable cases apiece, and their purses. Vic tugged out their luggage and left Branch to actually guide the women, one at a time, up the grade and into the warmth of the Charger.

He shut the rear driverside door on Mo at the same time that Vic slammed the trunk closed. "Got everything?" he shouted at her. Vic checked her belt – gun, cuffs, ammo, radio, keys – and nodded. "Wrecker?"

He shook his head, waved her forward to the front seat. "On their list. They'll get it out tomorrow."

They dropped the sisters Greenwald at the next exit south, at a motel that Branch swore wasn't a no-tell. Vic was dubious, but helped schlep luggage to the reception. They accepted a pair of to-go cups of weak coffee from the counter and left the sisters still tearfully waving through the window at them.

She piled into the side seat at the same time as Branch dropped behind the wheel. She turned to him, found him grinning back at her. They spoke over each other.

"Well, fuck me."

"That was fun."

She smirked. Branch laughed, actually laughed, and jammed the heater up to full. "C'mon, Dipty More-ready. Let's blow this taco stand."

The adrenaline high lasted until they were on the highway, but then the coffee kicked in, and she started an argument with Branch about the Eagles just for the fun of it. By making excessively improbable claims for her home team, she was able to keep the constant flow of chatter up all the way to Durant.

He seemed to appreciate it as much as she did.

She was mostly dried out by the time Branch pulled up to the parking place by Founder's Square. Her ankle was steadily throbbing, but she'd retightened the boot laces, and she figured it would hold until she got home to a hot soak and Sean's fingers on her calf.

Or so she thought, until she had to slog up the stairs in Branch's long-striding wake.

The office was quiet and half-lit when she opened the door. Branch's coat lay over his chair, dripping on the floor, and the other two desks were empty and tidy. Vic walked to her desk as straight as she could, dumping her bag on the floor and sinking down into her chair with relief.

She sat there, pressing her fingers to her eyes, then straightened, looking for her bottle of Motrin. God, she should have finished those Powder Junction reports in the car. She shook out a pair of pills, looked around for her water bottle.

The coffee pot beckoned. Vic eyed it, weighing the effort of rising and crossing the hardwood floor against the ache in her foot. Coffee won.

The door to the Sheriff's office was cracked open. Vic's better angel didn't put up any resistance and she leaned against the wall of the hallway, frankly eavesdropping. And peeking around the corner.

"-must have spun out less than ten minutes after me. If Vic hadn't seen it, we'd have been digging the two of them out next spring."

"Good thing you went down after her, then."

Branch shrugged, looked over his shoulder. "Yeah. It worked out."

The older man looked down at his desk. "Never mind what I said earlier. I'll comp you the half day. You pick a day, let me know."

Branch shrugged again. "Getting paid, aren't I?" He turned on a heel, walked out of the office. Vic hopped back ahead of him, busied herself at her desk, scribbling notes on her pad.

Branch paused beside her. "You want a ride back to your place, Vic?"

"I got it," Longmire said. "She'll need to finish the Powder Junction paperwork. You better take off now, or the Charger'll be stuck in the square until spring."

Branch nodded squarely at Longmire and hooked his coat off the back of his chair. "Catch you later," he said to the office air, and then he was gone, while Vic was still trying to figure how to say that she'd just get her husband to come get her.

"Thanks, I think," she said. "Umm. How long do I have?"

Longmire waved a hand. "Ruby's gone, the phone's forwarded. We'll go when you're done." He returned to his office, but didn't shut the door this time.

She applied herself to the paperwork, thinking of the little house and Sean. Probably neither of them had changed in three days. _Probably._ She mentally winced over the accident report for her unit, but stuck in the stack anyway.

Half an hour propped up and a pair of painkillers had helped her foot. It took only a bit of teeth grinding to walk mostly normally down the hall. When she tapped on the doorframe, Longmire looked up from the book in his lap and said, "Done?"

"Ready for your review."

"Good." He took the stack of papers and tossed them in his overflowing inbox, went back to his book.

 _Ooookay._ She stuck her hands in her pockets. "Um. You were going to give me a ride?" She hadn't called Sean, because she'd have to call Sean.

His eyes flicked up to her. "Right." He folded away the book. "How's your foot?"

There was no sense in pretending it didn't hurt at all. She made a face, tested the give in the ankle. "It'll be fine. I'll ice it tonight."

He shrugged, almost imperceptibly. "Ready to go?"

She made it down the stairs on her own, clinging to the stair railing with the strap from the overnight bag digging into her shoulder, and then nearly hit the concrete, tripping over the threshold to the sidewalk. Longmire wasn't there to see it, at least, having already crossed the road to his Bronco. So for the second time that day Vic fought with the lock on a door to a Sheriff Department office while another officer waited on her.

"Fuck my life," she swore again, just as glad Longmire, Branch – or worst of all, the Ferg – weren't there to hover at her elbow and offer a helping hand. Not that Longmire would have noticed, she thought viciously.

He had his unit cranked and warmed up, though, by the time she hobbled across the road. She flung her bag in the back and used the door to lever herself into the seat.

"You all right?"

She didn't look at him. "Door lock was stiff. Cold, I think."

Longmire regarded her. "We've got medical. If you have trouble, go by Durant Memorial, ask for Doc Bloomfield."

She paused in the middle of brushing her hands together and gave him a look. "He's never in, you know."

Longmire shrugged and put the Bronco into drive. "He is for me."

When he pulled the Bronco up to her house, he surprised her by putting the vehicle into park and clambering out. He crossed to her side almost before Vic had her door open, and took the overnighter over his own shoulder. When she had both feet on the ground, he held an elbow out to her. "Here."

"I don't need this," she said, and might have said it twice, as he guided her around Sean's SUV and up to the door.

"Well, I don't need to deal with the sick-leave paperwork," was all Longmire said. She let go of his arm as soon as she reached the steps and the guardrail. He dropped the bag on the front porch and rapped on the screen door as she was negotiating her way up the steps. Her foot slipped on the top step, and for a drunk old coot, he had fast reflexes.

"Thanks," she said. He frowned at her, kept his hands – huge mitts, even without gloves – on her as he helped her cross to the door. And given that Sean had evidently not scraped the front porch at all while she'd been gone, she appreciated the assistance.

And that was how Sean opened the front door on Vic – five hours late on returning after three days' absence – hanging onto her boss's arms on their front porch.

Longmire tipped his hat, said, "See you Monday, Vic," and left her standing there.

To give Sean credit, he didn't start the fight until after Longmire left, and she had two days off to make it up to him. Halfway through, she was tempted to start another fight, because the makeup sex was always worth it.

* * *

/to be continued/

* * *

 **Author's notes:**

Characters/Pairing: Gennish, mentions of Vic/Sean. Vic Moretti, Branch Connally, The Ferg, Ruby, Henry Standing Bear, Walt Longmire

Setting/Warnings: S1-ish, pre-series. Influenced by book characterization, except when I preferred the tv series. Minor OCs. Warnings for Moretti mouth and wide open skies.

A/N: Five part story. With thanks to the greatest beta eva (tm). All the errors remain my own. Title from Corb Lund's "September". Feedback and concrit aways appreciated. I hope you enjoyed the books and the tv show as much as I did.


	3. Wildlife

_Authors Notes/Warnings/Ect at the end_

* * *

 _/2/ Wildlife_

* * *

"Seriously?" Vic let off the transmit lever and hung the mic back on the dash without waiting for an answer. She put her hand back on the steering wheel and then snatched up the mic again. "What the fuck do I know about herding sheep?"

"Vic, just get them off the road. That grandstanding Beemer is going to blast through here any minute now, and you're closer." Branch's voice was edged and impatient. He'd been out at the speedtrap less than an hour, by Vic's reckoning, and hadn't called in any hits.

There was some _Eastern dude_ in a shiny imported sportster who was evidently commuting to Denver twice a week from a housing development south and west of town. In the last two months, the car had been the subject of five call-in complaints and two articles in the _Durant Courant_. Sheriff-Candidate Connally, it appeared, was intent on the execution of his sworn duties.

Vic opened her mouth and shut it again so hard she could hear her teeth snap. "Fine. On my way." She was still the new hire, even if by experience she ought to outrank both Branch and the Ferg. Ferg hadn't put up much argument.

She took her frustrations with the chain of command out on the median, and gunned Absaroka County's oldest SUV back down the road towards Durant. Before she was out of range, she keyed the mic again. "If there are snakes involved, you better check your bed tonight."

Twenty two miles later, she came over the rise and hit the brakes. The newest ASD Bronco – the one that Vic only got to drive twice when Longmire was out of town and left Vic to manage the entire county on her own – sat on the gravel shoulder, lights slowly turning. Vic pulled her vehicle off the road behind it and remembered to not slam the door as she got out.

Longmire had been looking at his boot toes. When Vic came up, boot treads scrunching on the gravel, he looked up and said, "Hey."

"Hey yourself." She looked left, then right, across the empty road. "What are you doing here? Where the fuck are the sheep?"

Longmire ducked his head again, as though _directions to livestock_ were sketched in the dirt between his pointed toes. "Thought you might use a hand. And they're down there." He did that jerk with his chin that had confused the hell out of Vic the first three weeks in Wyoming, pointing down to the other side of the road, where the slope of the road dropped away.

"You're off today," Vic said, hoping that _don't you think this gets you out of answering the phone on Saturday_ came through loud and clear.

"Yeah, just on my way into town."

Vic sized up Longmire's rumpled clothes and the two-day scruff on his face. _On your way to get another case of beer._ She sighed.

"Whatever. So they're off the road, we can go home now, right?"

Five months had been long enough that she recognized that extra space people put in, before they disagreed with her. She groaned.

"Gate's down that way most of a mile," Longmire said, "And the angle's not good."

Vic'd passed the turn-in on the way down, and while she didn't know why that turn was bad, she figured she'd learn. "Great. Any chance Old MacDonald will come help?"

Longmire shrugged. "Likely out cutting hay. They'll call the station tonight."

The thought of extra work for Branch was enough to cheer her up. "Just you and me, then, boss-man. Let's get this show on the road."

Longmire's mouth creased at the edges, like he was shutting his teeth around things he didn't think she needed to know. Inwardly, Vic groaned again, and prepared herself for surprises.

Surprise number one came after Longmire sketched out his plan for re-containerizing the livestock and sent Vic down the road to open the gate. She pulled her SUV in a sloppy U-turn and nearly went off the road, goggling at the sheep.

In her mind, these had been the grungy grey slightly-worm-like things she'd seen out on the range and in pens at the base of the hills – might have white faces, might be black, but it wasn't like Vic was a bigot. All bunched up, they were still mostly grey, and sheep stank no matter what they looked like.

Reality, though, was two dozen black and white spotted sheep with fucking _antlers_.

She snatched the mic up again. "What the fuck are those things?" In the rear view, Longmire waved her on down the road. Vic threw the mic across the vehicle and went down to open the gate.

Surprise two was the gate – already open, with the grass on the highwayside tramped down. As was the gate. Vic dug the far end free of the mud and drug the flaking-red metal-pipe mass to one side – the downhill side, away from the sheep.

She'd figured out the angle was bad because the slope of the ground and the age of the gate were so that it would only open out, and only so far as to be an effective barrier stretching between the fence and the road, hindering the movement of anything traveling down the right of way from the direction of Longmire's Bronco. But the broken hinges pretty much made that moot. As directed, Vic parked her vehicle nose to the gatepost between the gate proper, so that her front tire contacted the so-called cattle guard that marked the driveway access to the highway.

(She'd learned that cattle guards were a shitty goat guard before she knew the spaced bars were effective at keeping cows in. It had been an interesting first week.)

A bit of inventive wedging, and she had the gate propped against her vehicle so that the sheep only had to make a hard right straight back into home pasture. She left the keys in the Bronco and jogged across the road, before making her way back up to Longmire and the watch he kept over the sheep.

"What the hell are those things?" she asked, stomping up to him. "Those goats or something? Deformed goats?"

"Sheep," Longmire said. "Jacob sheep. They're supposed to look like that." He nodded at the shoulder of the road. "You walk along there, about even with the middle of the group. I'll go down along the fence, push from behind. Pay attention, I don't know how easy they are to drive."

By _Pay Attention_ , Vic had figured out three months back, Longmire meant _walk, don't get too far ahead, and stop when I stop._ She stood on the edge of the road and looked down the long slope of the shoulder as Longmire picked his way down the sloping shoulder, with that dumbass hat sitting on his head like it had grown there. The sheep-goats picked up their heads and visibly huddled together as Longmire approached. His voice floated up to Vic.

"Hey-up, sheep," Longmire called. "Hey-up. Walk on."

He didn't so much as wave his arms, and from previous lessons, Vic kept her fists knotted in her coat pockets. The sheep-goats looked at Longmire, looked up the slope at Vic, the shadows of their horns – two and three pairs of horns per animal, as far as Vic could tell – making the spotted coats even more complicated, until Longmire crossed some invisible line and the animals turned as one and began making their way along the fenceline, away from Longmire.

Vic kept pace, more or less, jogging ahead just a bit when the sheep would have skirted too close to the road. Five cars passed as they traveled the mile to the gate – five cars and three semi-tractor-trailers, the last a possum-belly livestock hauler that stank of dead cow shit. When they closed on the gate, Longmire waved her forward and down, and Vic obediently came up closer on the sheep, so that they were actively looking for the break in the fence by the time they got to the cattle guard and the gate.

Surprise number three:

Longmire looked at the red-painted gate, jammed between the SUV and the gatepost, and then at Vic, and said, "Good job."

Surprise number four:

Longmire looked at the hinges and said, "That'll never hold. We need to get them penned up. Or else just be back out here tomorrow."

So they tugged the metal gate back more or less into place, and Vic drove the SUV slowly down the drive, behind un-de-muttoned wool that scattered piles of dry scat in full view of Vic's windshield.

"No, seriously, what the fuck are these things? These aren't normal sheep."

"Jacob sheep. They're an old breed, named for a passage in the Bible."

"What?" Vic looked at Longmire, and the set of his mouth, before returning her attention to the animals before her. One of them – a big one, with two horns sticking straight up like pronghorns, and two more horns arcing out like a person with their firsts on their hips – kept turning around to look at the SUV. "You're kidding me."

"No. They're not fast growers, not like Suffolk, and not great wool like Rambouillet. But they're good on range, and people like the horns."

"Yeah, crazy people!"

Longmire shrugged. "Hold up at this low spot. We'll push them in from here."

Surprise number five:

Sheep were mean fuckers.

"I don't get it," Vic groused, on the way back to the SUV. "There was water, and lots of nice greeny grass on the other side of the fence." She shot a glance at Longmire, who was brushing grass stains off his coat.

"Yeah?"

"So what the fuck was his beef with me?"

Longmire took four long strides without talking. "Maybe he thought you liked his girls."

"Fuck you."

"You do say that to everyone."

"I don't mean it! Not girls in general! Especially NOT the sheep!"

Longmire shrugged. Vic shoved her fists deeper in her coat, muttering about Wyoming sheep and Wyoming men. Longmire shrugged again.

She dropped him at his Bronco. Longmire paused halfway out the door. "You going to make it, the rest of the day?"

Vic looked at him, looking for trembling in his hands, and not finding it. "Yeah. Thanks." He nodded, tapped the side of the SUV, and walked away.

She was halfway home when Ruby called and sent her back out the long way, this time to take a report of a rabid rabbit worrying chickens at the Pokerton's place. She passed Longmire's Bronco on the way out, as he pulled out of the Cruizer on 64. He lifted a hand to her. She flipped him off.

By the time Vic got to Pokerton's, though, Old Man P's grandson had come home, relieved Mr Pokerton of the shotgun, and recaptured his visiting cousin's little fluffy dog. The dog peeked out from beneath the cousin's arm and yelped at Vic. Mr Pokerton was indignant. The grandson was sympathetic.

"…And I don't even think rabbits ken get th' hydrophobia," Pokerton eventually allowed. "So's it might be a mistake."

"Fee-she's had his shots," the cousin said, stroking Fee-she's ribbon-decked head. The grandson met Vic's eye and shrugged.

He walked Vic to her vehicle, all sixteen-year-old spots and Western wariness. Vic refrained from observing that coyotes could eat little fluffy dogs as easily as they ate cats, and warned him to keep the shotgun away from Mr Pokerton.

She gunned the SUV away at a moderate pace, barely even scattering dust.

Supper was still warm when she pulled in, half an hour late, and evidently Ruby had called Sean, who had opened a bottle of wine, and let her vent over supper and Yellow Tail Merlot.

 _I don't need to move to Australia_ , she told Sean. _Everything in Wyoming already wants to kill me._ And that was enough of a joke to crack him up, and then she did, too, hanging onto his shoulder and struggling to stop laughing long enough to both suck in wind and listen to the happiness in Sean's voice. And then one thing led to another, and they ended up tangled in the sheets with the shades still open and the last of the summer light turning the sky gold.

Afterwards, she must have been more exhausted than she knew, because they drifted off to sleep with the lights still off in the house, and she never had to explain the black marks on her left triceps, where Longmire had jerked her out of the way of the last ram.

It would have just led to another argument, and she'd already tore her throat raw, at Walt and the fucking sheep both.

* * *

 _/to be continued/_

* * *

 **Author's notes:**

Characters/Pairing: Gennish, mentions of Vic/Sean. Vic Moretti, Branch Connally, The Ferg, Ruby, Henry Standing Bear, Walt Longmire

Setting/Warnings: S1-ish, pre-series. Influenced by book characterization, except when I preferred the tv series. Minor OCs. Warnings for Moretti mouth and wide open skies.

A/N: Five part story. With thanks to the greatest beta eva (tm). All the errors remain my own. Title from Corb Lund's "September". Info on livestock breeds can be found at the Oklahoma State University Livestock Website. Vic knows that sheep are livestock and not wildlife, yet does not care. Feedback and concrit aways appreciated. I hope you enjoyed the books and the tv show as much as I did.


	4. Whackjobs

_Author's notes/warnings/etc at the end_

* * *

 _/3/Wackjobs_

* * *

Heat beat down on Founder's Square, on the prickly pointy grass, on the pathetic baby trees. On Vic's bare head.

"Oh, for crying out loud," she muttered under her breath. "Get a move on." She shoved her aviators back up to her eyebrows, the nose pieces slick on her sweating face.

From where she sat, on a park bench catty-corner from the ASD parking places, Vic could trace a wilting trio of German tourists crossing the greenspace in search of shade and ice cream. "Go on, run home and take your black socks with you." She let her gaze follow the visitors to the sidewalk, and then brought her eyes back to the walkway in front of the ASD office. "C'mon Walt, quit playing patty-cake." One foot bounced up and down on the packed soil under the bench, beside a crumpled plastic bag of dirt. She pressed down on her knee, the dark blue jeans dry and harsh to the touch.

"Good afternoon."

Vic's head snapped around and she blinked.

Henry Standing Bear stared back at her, standing on the grass beside her large as daylight. She hadn't heard him come up beside her, _again_.

"Um," Vic said, "hi," because she still wasn't entirely clear on Standing Bear. He wasn't a cop, and there was a lot about him that screamed _not a cop_ in the worst way. She spent a lot of time trying to slot him into the _confidential informant_ box, but in the bits of conversation she'd overheard between Standing Bear and the Sheriff, Walt Longmire had done more confiding and informing than the Indian. "He's tied up right now."

"I will wait," Standing Bear said, eschewing contractions as if he'd never been taught English like a normal person, and stood there, settling in to wait. "Unless that will interfere with what you are doing."

"Nope, not at all." The German tourists walked out, licking melting ice cream cones, and wandered away, up the street.

"… tell me, what is it that you are doing?"

Vic groaned and slumped forward. "Guarding a potential crime scene," she said, running a hand over her hair. Her scalp felt scorching from the outside. There was _no way_ that was a good sign. She waved a hand, not looking up, first at the Jimmy parked nose-in before her, and then at the trio in front of the office. "Half an hour ago, some high-country hicks hauled a hash-head hobo – hand delivered him – up to our office." She had to be coming down with sunstroke, but her mouth was engaged and her brain said, _oh, what the hell_. "His humble High Sheriffness is giving a half-assed attempt at explaining honor and high-jacking charges to the hapless hicks, in hopes of hearty healing all around. It's heartbreaking. Until they see the error of their ways, I am here. Hanging out." She sat back, feeling smug, until her bare elbows contacted the sun-baked top rail of the bench. She yelped and jerked her arms off the metal.

Standing Bear looked at her. Vic set her jaw and looked back. Two long breaths, and he said, "Hi-larious."

"Is that the best you got, Hiawatha?" Shit. "Sorry, that actually came out worse than I thought it would."

He looked toward the sidewalk conference. "Did it? I can not see… _how_ ," and made a short, stiff movement with the palm of his right hand.

Vic blinked, _no way, he did not_ , but the sides of the man's mouth twitched, just a bit. "Only a _hair_ ," she breathed, and fuck her life, there it was, an actual closed-mouth smile. She barked a brief laugh, and only remembered to not lean on the bench when it was too late.

"Who is the…hash-head hobo?" Henry asked, as if it was of no concern of his. Which it wasn't, but Vic had to appreciate a man who could take a joke.

"Guy name of Overbank. Bill Overbank."

"Hmm." Henry stood there for a moment as if the baking sun did not exist, except to draw blue highlights in his hair. "Are you certain it was not Bilbo Underhill?"

Vic groaned. "You did not just geek _Lord of the Rings_ at me."

"No, I did not. That was from _The Hobbit_."

"Jesus," Vic said, then jumped up to her feet as Walt approached. The two mountain ranchers were walking away on the sidewalk, evidently heading for ice cream.

"Henry, Vic."

"What's the word?" Vic asked over the top of Henry saying " _Hay-ohe_." Screw him, he hadn't been sitting out here in the sun for half an hour.

"They're going to let us handle it. No charges."

"No crime scene?"

"No crime scene."

"Out-fucking-standing." She grabbed up the bag of dirt. "I'll be inside," and turned to stride across to the office. And air-conditioning. Walt's voice stopped her.

"What's that?" When she turned, he gestured at the bag in her hand.

"This? When Kit Carson and Jeremiah Johnson dumped Bilbo –" and there, she was never going be able to think of the cannabis-soaked wanderer as anything but his pipe-weed smoking literary cousin – "out on the pavement, they shook out the blanket he was lying on. I picked up the clumps of mud, just in case." She turned the bag over in her hand, half tempted to open it up and let the dirt drift on the breeze. But there was no breeze, and Walt's ass got even tighter in the presence of litter.

"Huh." Walt paused after the effort of expressing that deep insight. "Well, no crime scene." He waved Vic on to the office, clearly in no hurry to have her overhear whatever he had to say to Henry. "I'll catch up with you."

She nodded, tipped her glasses at Standing Bear. "Hang in there, Henry," and left them to it.

The air inside of the office wasn't much below eighty, but after the high-plains-desert of the asphalt outside, it was like stepping into a meat locker. Vic tucked her sunglasses into her shirt and trotted up the steps.

The weirdest part of the weirdo wackjobs that littered the barren heart of Wyoming…was how she still struggled, months on, to figure out what was _real_. There was things like – well, like Henry. Real Live Indian, but not a feather or a fringed jacket to be seen. And Sheriff Longmire. She could accuse Walt of overplaying the tall silent Clint Eastwood type, except…he wasn't playing. That was just _Walt_ , down to the bone.

And then there were guys like the two cowboys who had brought in the trespasser. For…breaking a fence? And maybe for poaching fish? Two guys who – according to Walt – didn't come into town more than twice a year, but they'd driven all the way to Durant, out of season, to hand-deliver this guy.

She thought about Philly, about what it would have been like, if people had been marching second-story guys and drug runners into the precinct house, instead of calling 911 for everything from speeding police cruisers to stabbings in front of a dozen people and zero witnesses. Vic shook her head, kept moving up the stairs.

It would be a bad sign when she started taking them seriously. Not _wearing a cowboy hat_ bad, but still, _not good_.

Inside the office, Ruby looked up from her 76-wpm transcription of a wrinkled report and nodded at Vic. Beyond her, the Ferg had wheeled his chair around beside the holding cell, and had a USGS map spread over his knees. A steno pad was balanced on one thigh, and he gripped a pen with thick fingers. He didn't even glance at Vic, but kept his focus on the ramblings of the bearded dude in the holding cell. As Vic pushed through the knee gate, Ferg interrupted their prisoner – apparently not for the first time. "Hold on, you said you came down the creek where?"

Vic dropped in her chair and leaned back, thank God and all his angels, archangels, principalities, and powers that she'd drawn the desk under the a/c vent. Across the bull pen, the Ferg went on "interrogating" their prisoner.

"Yeah, man, that's where I used the Red Nomad, pulled out a really nice brown." Bilbo pointed a finger through the bars, denting the map with a grimy finger. The man's fishing vest, festooned with fuzzy fishhooks that supposedly looked like insects to the most stupid of fish, lay carefully draped over the Ferg's desk. Vic thought about warning the Ferg about getting angling tips from fish-poachers, but decided against it, in favor of slinking further down under the vent. There was something making a knot under her butt cheek. She dug in her back pocket and pulled out the sack of dirt and threw it on the desk.

 _Maybe I should get a hat_ , she thought. Something in a really light tan. Maybe an Australian style, just curled on one side. She thought about it again. _Maybe I am getting sunstroke_.

"Vic…" the Ferg's voice, low and concerned. And standing way too close.

She picked up her head. "Yeah?"

"Vic, what is this?" The Ferg was leaning over her desk, her dirt bag in his hand, one meaty finger poking at the dried mud.

"Hey, grabby mitts, that's my –" right. _No crime scene_. "Fine, you want the dirt, you can have it."

"No, seriously, Vic, where did you get it?"

She groaned and came upright. "From the ground just in back of the truck that brought Bilbo here in." Ferg looked at her. "Mr Overbank. The dirt was probably from the truck, if not from his muddy clodhoppers." Ferg stared at her some more. "I picked it up off the road, okay? You want it, you can have it. Otherwise it goes in the trash."

Ferg blinked, said, "Thanks," and went back to his desk, where he pulled a cardboard box out of his bottom drawer, along with a well thumbed book. The book had a colorful cover and said MINERALS in thick letters. He slammed the book open on his desk and started firing another set of questions at Bilbo.

Vic groaned and leaned back under the vent, only to open her eyes and look up again when she felt another person in the room.

Walt Longmire stood at the end of the hallway, arms folded and frowning at Ferg. Vic looked at him, at the pale streak across the top of his head, where the hat normally rested, and the golden hair that coated his thick forearms. His arms and elbows were paler than his face, and above his left biceps there was a thin scar that led up into the brief span of ivory skin before diving beneath his short sleeved shirt. His eyes flicked over to her, and Vic became aware that she was draped over her chair under a sweat-soaked cotton shirt. Then Walt's eyes were back on the Ferg. Vic turned her head, following Walt's gaze, noting the vest, and Bilbo, and Ferg, who had a monocle, of all things, stuck on one eyeball.

Walt cleared his throat. Ferg jumped, and then began grabbing at his papers.

"Sheriff!" Ferg jerked to his feet, grabbed the chair before it turned over, and then approached Walt. "Sheriff, I think –" He seized up, swallowed.

"The Biersons aren't going to press charges. You don't have to write up Mr Overbank for trespassing."

"Oh. Okay." Ferg looked back over his shoulder – not at the prisoner, but at the vest on his desk – and back at Walt. "Sheriff…"

Walt stood there, waiting long past the point where Vic would have turned and walked away.

"Well, Sheriff, see…" And then the Ferg launched into a long spiel, laying out the rocks from Vic's mud clumps, jabbing a finger at the map on the wall, marching over to the vest and shaking two of the fishhooks in Walt's face and talking about access roads and a mine entrance.

" – so, it can't be Bill that broke that fence. I mean, it _could_ be. But it doesn't make _sense_ , not if the Biersons found him where they said they did. There's something going on, up at that old Bakerman mine." Ferg gulped. "I think we need to check it out."

Longmire looked at the map. Vic sat back and narrowed her eyes, noting how Walt's eyes went to the fishhook on the map, and to the man in the cell, and back to the Ferg.

"Bakerman mine's on National Forest land."

"Yes, sir."

Walt frowned. "I can't have you wandering out there alone. And we've got too much going on here to spare someone to go with you." He looked at Ferg under his eyebrows. "You're sure about this?"

"Yes, Sheriff."

"Hmm." Vic stuffed the fingers of her right hand in her mouth, and didn't make a peep. "How about this, you call up to the Forest Service, see if they have someone to meet you."

"But – but that could be days!"

Longmire nodded. "Yeap." He frowned at the map some more. "Well, if you were up there, waiting on them, it might get them off their asses, make them hurry up a bit. Your cousin Harry still has a cabin up there, doesn't he? Mind you," he said, as Ferg blinked and straightened up, "I expect you to investigate this completely. Check out every bit of Mr Overbank's story." He reached out and plucked one of the furry hooks from the vest Ferg still held in one hand. "Did he really say he caught a brown trout on a Nomad?"

"Yes, Sheriff," Ferg stammered. "At least, that's what he said."

"Huh." Walt nodded, handed the fishhook back to the Ferg. "If you left now, you could get up there, be ready to walk the trail by day break."

"You mean it? I mean, yes, yes I could." Ferg nodded firmly. "I'll look into all of it."

Vic sat under the a/c as Ferg snatched up his books and rocks, had a whispered conference with Ruby, and was out the door. Walt unlocked the holding cell door, had Bilbo sign a paper acknowledging reunion with his fishing gear, and advised the angler where he could find overnight lodging and a phone.

He came back from shutting the door behind Mr Overbank and stopped in front of Vic, who pulled her knuckles out of her teeth and said, "Did you really just give Ferg three days to go fishing?" Laughing, because watching Ferg think that he had gotten away with it was worth it. "What the fuck do I have to do to get that kind of a deal?"

That won her a smile. "Take up fishing." Walt, unlike Henry, smiled with his teeth showing. "You and Branch will have to pull extra shifts."

She snorted, not at all unhappy. "Tomorrow, yeah. I'm off as of three. You got a double shift tonight."

Walt offered her a beer, and she drank it slow, sitting with her feet propped on the bottom drawer of her desk. He wasn't a great conversationalist, but she did draw a couple stories out of him – most particularly the story of Cady's first fishing trip, and how both Walt and his daughter had ended up in the drink, both swearing the other to silence, only to have both of them spill the truth to Walt's wife in less than thirty seconds. Walt went quiet then, and when Branch showed up, left with even less fuss than usual.

She sorted out splitting the Ferg's shifts over the next couple of days with Branch, trading an extra day at Powder Junction for two late nights running radar, and then headed home herself.

Driving back, dust billowing in the open window and the one beer still comfortable in her belly, she started thinking about the months ahead. _Should look over the Ferg's training certs_. He was astonishingly capable in more than a few things, but shockingly ignorant in others. Branch had vehicle collisions down pat, at least as far as she could do for him, and she wasn't sure how much to offer, otherwise.

 _I could work for Branch_ , she thought, and it made her sad. She didn't want to, but she could.

She peeled out of the uniform as soon as she hit the door, pulled on her running clothes and went out to tackle the hill up to Cactus Road and the long way along the ridge before circling home. By the time she got out of the shower, Sean was back and already sprawled on the couch with half a forest's worth of dead tree reports.

He shook his head when she offered him a beer. She looked at the stack of cans in the fridge - the Milwaukee quasi-micros that Sean had bought on Monday – and poured herself a glass of tea instead.

She put the pitcher away, shut the fridge, leaned against it. "Sean, you know, I was thinking. You ever think about going fishing out here?"

He lifted his head from the report he'd been buried in. "What, like in the reservoir? Why do that?"

She shrugged, took a sip of tea. "We're not going to be here forever, right? Might as well try to get some of the authentic experience, see the sights."

He sighed, stared in the distance as if he'd never really thought about it. "I've got some days saved up, we could drive down to Denver, catch a show, eat some real food." He turned a smile on her, the fond, easy one she'd fallen in love with, back when she hadn't wanted anything hard or edgy or demanding or _difficult_ ever again. "That could be nice."

It would be nice. And not what she was thinking about. "Sure. I'd like that." She leaned over the couch, slipped her arm around his shoulders. "You, me, the bright lights."

"Hey, we could even go to a rodeo." But his attention was back on the report, and he didn't look up when she released him and stepped away.

She took another sip of tea and considered the top of Sean's head and the way the hair there was a little thin, but still had that silly swoop that matched the arc of his eyebrows. (She'd spent an entire half of an hour, one late night in Philly, trying to explain to Sean why this mattered, and why it was one of the most beautiful things about him, but she thought Sean never actually _understood_.) She dropped a kiss on the not-quite bare spot, and asked, absently, "What do you think about putting in some local brews?"

"You really are getting into this," Sean said without looking up. Vic shrugged. As if he could see her, he asked, "What were you thinking of?" He stuck a thumb on the report index to mark his place and looked up at Vic. "No, not that Clear Creek shit."

She snorted. "No." She thought, considering. "You liked that Snake River Amber, when we were in Jackson. And I dunno, I just thought, we're out here in the Rockies. We should try something new."

Sean bent back over his reports. "Well, sure. Whatever you like."

* * *

 _/to be concluded/_

* * *

 **Author's notes:**

One more (short) piece to finish it up, should be up tomorrow.

 _Characters/Pairing:_ Gennish, mentions of Vic/Sean. Vic Moretti, Branch Connally, The Ferg, Ruby, Henry Standing Bear, Walt Longmire

 _Setting/Warnings:_ S1-ish, pre-series. Influenced by book characterization, except when I preferred the tv series. Minor OCs. Warnings for Moretti mouth and wide open skies.

 _A/N_ : Five part story. With thanks to the greatest beta eva (tm). All the errors remain my own. Title from Corb Lund's "September". Feedback and concrit aways appreciated. I hope you enjoyed the books and the tv show as much as I did.


	5. That Other Thing

_Author's notes/warnings/etc at the end_

* * *

 _/x/ That Other Thing_

* * *

His hat tipped back far enough to give him an un-obscured view of the horizon, Walt turned in place, making a slow 360-degree reconnaissance of the landscape. Then he did it again. Vic folded her arms and glared.

All around them, the prairie stretched out, twenty-six miles north, east and south, a bit less to the west, where the Bighorns reached up to touch the sky. The ground underneath was gravel and thin topsoil, under a barely-modest cover of sagebrush and what-was-it, right, _buffalo grass._ The wind was Wyoming late October - stumbling and aimless, but bound to be significant _eventually_.

Walt stopped, looking east-ish. Vic glanced over her shoulder and shoved her sunglasses up to her eyebrows again. She gave it another two breaths.

"I'm going up on that rise, take a look around." She was turning away even as Walt's head came down and his eyes came back from the razor edge of the sky against the earth to focus on her.

"Vic." She stopped, mid stride, and fought down the urge to huff _"What?!"_ at him. "Which rise?"

She pointed, north of east, where the ground rose in a jumbled mass. Not as high as the hump to the west, but that one would only give her a view of the highway, and if Walt thought the… _ruffians_ had stuck to the road, she'd be in a nice warm vehicle, talking to the HPs. Walt nodded, pursed his lips, and wandered over to the southwest, back up to the black marks of the vehicle leaving the road.

Vic resisted the temptation to snap a response and stuffed her hands in her coat pockets, because the ground was rough and covered with heaps of volcanic stone, and she knew better than to put her hands on loose stones out here. She indulged in kicking rocks as she went, which started a few meadowlarks out of the sage, and once, a jackrabbit.

She was breathing a bit hard when she topped the rise, but _God_ , it was worth it. The whole of the northern horizon was a mass of grey and black clouds, twisting and tumbling over each other in their rush forward. They overshadowed the peaks of the Bighorns, staining the snow-capped peaks like tarnished silver. Here and there, scraps of sunlight broke through the clouds and soaked the earth in gold.

Much closer, the trail of the stolen vehicle stood black and thick, a double line of burnt mud over thick green moss.

Vic grinned in delighted satisfaction, _police work, yo_ , and then looked back up at the storm, until she became aware of someone calling her name.

She turned and found him – a narrow figure, brown and faded, but distinct and like no other - on the opposite rise.

Walt raised his hand, beckoned her over.

Vic looked over her shoulder at the storm growing behind her and tugged her gloves from the inner pocket of her coat. She skirted the piles of rocks as she came down the slope, all but skipping, because skipping annoyed the boss, and Walt with his worn face bent into a scowl was worth a laugh.

"What?" she asked, when she came to a halt in front of Walt. Without waiting on him to reply, she pointed to the north and ran her hand east along the horizon. "They drove the vehicle out that way, and I bet if we follow the ruts we'll find a few bags dropped along the way. Might even be some papers, but most of them would have blown away. They'll follow the draw, and probably end up heading towards the Rez over there." She pointed at the break in the hills.

Walt nodded.

"Well?"

He shrugged. "Sounds good."

"Good?" She snorted, put her hands on her hips. "Old man, I am the _best_."

That won her a long glance and a tug at the corners of his mouth. "So I hear." He turned back to the north-running swale and began picking his way along in the aftermath of the stolen vehicle.

"Wait, Walt, where are we going?"

Walt half swung around, glancing at her between the brim of his hat and the corner of his coat. _Damn._ If she could pull that off, she'd drive to Cheyenne for a hat _tonight_. "Thought you said there'd be bags to collect."

She sighed, looked at the storm. It wasn't going to hit before sunset, and they'd be back on gravel by then. When she turned back, he had stopped and was staring back at her. "You got someplace else to be, Vic?"

"Nope." She looked back over her shoulder at the two ASD vehicles parked in the gravel, then trotted to catch up. "There better not be snakes. I'm just saying."

"There won't be snakes."

"If there are snakes, you owe me a beer."

"There won't be snakes."

It took her another month and a half to collect on the Rainier, but it was worth it.

* * *

 _/end/_

* * *

 **Author's notes:**

 _Characters/Pairing:_ Gennish, mentions of Vic/Sean. Vic Moretti, Branch Connally, The Ferg, Ruby, Henry Standing Bear, Walt Longmire

 _Setting/Warnings:_ S1-ish, pre-series. Influenced by book characterization, except when I preferred the tv series. Minor OCs. Warnings for Moretti mouth and wide open skies.

 _A/N_ : Five part story. With thanks to the greatest beta eva (tm). All the errors remain my own. Title from Corb Lund's "September". Feedback and concrit aways appreciated. I hope you enjoyed the books and the tv show as much as I did.

Thanks for all the encouragement as this went!


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